Rochester Region Federal Funds Dashboard
How the Rochester Region Is Spending Federal Recovery Dollars
This dashboard tracks data on how the City of Rochester and Monroe County have allocated State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) provided through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The federal government has transferred unprecedented levels of flexible relief funds to local governments to help them recover from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and to move into longer-term growth. These funds grant a great deal of authority to municipal governments to decide how they should be spent, and they must be obligated by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026. As the City of Rochester and Monroe County allocate and spend these funds, they have an opportunity to not only stimulate economic growth, but to increase equity and remediate some of the past injustices that have been built into our nation’s laws and programs. To do so, the funds must be used to ensure that everyone–especially historically excluded groups–can benefit from and contribute to economic growth.
Previous work by the Urban Institute identified five building blocks of an inclusive recovery and equitable economy, shown below. These were identified based on empirical research and in collaboration with community leaders from across the country. We focus on how well Rochester and Monroe County’s SLFRF allocations align with the building blocks of an inclusive recovery and equitable economy.
The Building Blocks of An Inclusive Recovery and Equitable Economy
Note: This dashboard does not track outcomes from these investments – it only shows where the dollars are flowing1.
Which policy areas are being funded?
The figure below shows how funding has been allocated across policy categories. Most of the funds have been allocated to community and economic development, infrastructure, and housing, while the least have been allocated to public health and COVID-19 response, operations, and public safety.
Which subtopics are funded within each policy area?
The figure below provides a more detailed breakdown of subtopic allocations within each policy area. For example, most of the money allocated to community and economic development has been allocated to workforce development. Click on each tab to see allocations toward subtopics within each policy area.
How much is allocated toward an inclusive recovery and equitable economy?
By our estimation, 66% of city and county SLFRF funding has been allocated toward the building blocks of an inclusive recovery and equitable economy. The figure below shows the total amount of funding for Rochester and Monroe County that was allocated to programs that align with these building blocks, based on review of the program description and goals.
Out of the 66% of funds allocated to programs that align with the five building blocks of an inclusive recovery and equitable economy, the most funding has been allocated to reinvesting in disinvested communities while the least has been allocated to creating jobs for residents hardest hit by the pandemic or who face the greatest barriers to employment. The figure below shows how that funding is divided among the five building blocks and includes only the funds allocated to programs that align with the building blocks (the 66%).
How does funding align with the Rochester Area Community Foundation’s priorities?
Overall, 62% of SLFRF funding has been allocated toward the Rochester Area Community Foundation’s (RACF) priorities. These include:
Closing the academic achievement and opportunity gap;
Fostering racial and ethnic understanding and equity;
Partnering against poverty;
Supporting arts and culture;
Preserving historic assets;
Advancing environmental justice and sustainability; and
Promoting successful aging.
The figure below shows how SLFRF funding is divided among the priority topics and includes only the funds allocated to programs that align with one of RACF’s priority areas. The majority of the aligned funds are for partnering against poverty, followed by advancing environmental justice. Less well funded through SLFRF are preserving historical assets, promoting successful aging, and supporting arts and culture.
An Example: Rochester ENergy Efficiency and Weatherization
Monroe County used 67% of their SLFRF funds to competitively fund community organizations and County departments that align with six focus areas: public safety, public health and wellness, economic recovery, workforce development, infrastructure improvements, and sustainability. One of the groups that received this funding is Rochester ENergy Efficiency and Weatherization (RENEW), a collective impact initiative in Rochester that helps income-qualified homeowners make their homes more energy-efficient, healthier, and safer from environmental hazards. RENEW received $850,000 of SLFRF funds from Monroe County to fund its grants for repairs or replacements in community members’ homes, including work on insulation, furnaces, hot water heaters, and emergency health and safety repairs of sewer lines and electrical panels. Using these funds, RENEW will assist at least 200 income-qualified homeowners and up to 800 residents living in those homes to complete projects that promote energy-efficiency, health, and/or safety goals. County funding also helped RENEW unlock $1 million in matching funds that interviewees noted the organization would not have been able to receive without the support of their work through SLFRF funds. Listen to an episode of WXXI’s Connections to hear about RENEW’s impact in the community.
“We’re hearing about the better physical and mental health impacts, particularly the benefit of the mental health impacts in terms of being able to have a home that is safe and healthy, and that you’re not worried about the leak in the basement or the fact that your utility bill is too difficult to pay.”
- Elizabeth McDade, RENEW Director
Which neighborhoods are the funds allocated to?
The map below shows how the City of Rochester’s SLFRF capital investments map onto original Federal redlining maps, as well as racial characteristics of neighborhoods. Click on the tabs at the top to see how they overlap with the percent of residents who are Black 2 in a neighborhood and the percent of residents who are Hispanic/Latino 3 in a neighborhood.
Redlining refers to the system that the Federal Housing Administration and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation used to grade the profitability of neighborhoods in the late 1930s. The four categories were green (areas most desirable for lending purposes), blue (still desirable), yellow (declining), and red (the riskiest for mortgage support). These grades were largely based on the neighborhood’s racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious composition. Generally, white, middle-class neighborhoods received FHA home loans, whereas many Black and Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods were deemed hazardous and declining in value and did not receive FHA insured mortgages or loans. These maps had long lasting effects on racial segregation, homeownership, and house values in redlined neighborhoods.
The maps below give us a first approximation of how equitably investments are distributed. We encourage further exploration of how these investments align with the goals of community members and how much they benefit historically excluded residents.
How might Rochester invest more into equity and inclusion?
Other places have found ways to use federal funds to invest in the building blocks of an inclusive recovery and equitable economy. For instance, the City of Boston is using ARPA funds to transform publicly-owned land into green, mixed income communities. One project in Chinatown, shown below, will include 83 affordable rental units and 36 affordable homeownership units. The property is located in a walkable and bikeable neighborhood and will be energy efficient and follow the City of Boston’s Carbon Free, Climate Resilient, and Healthy Community goals. It was developed after extensive community engagement with nearby neighbors. To read more about this and other investments into the building blocks of an inclusive recovery and equitable economy, see this research summary from the Urban Institute that highlights one example from each building block.
Explore All Programs Funded
The table below shows all programs that the City of Rochester and Monroe County have allocated SLFRF funds to, as well as their building block, policy area, policy subtopic, and RACF priority area category. The default display on the table shows the programs in order from largest to smallest allocation. You can use the arrows next to each column title to sort the table by that column, and you can use the search bars under each column or the overall search bar to search the table.
Data current as of: 05/01/24
About the Dashboard
This dashboard was created by the Urban Institute in partnership with and support from ACT Rochester and Rochester Area Community Foundation (RACF) to visualize Monroe County and the City of Rochester’s SLFRF allocations by the five building blocks of an inclusive recovery, policy category, and RACF’s investment priorities. By tracking recovery funding expenditures, this dashboard allows us to monitor public allocations by the categories most critical in supporting an inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For more information about the dashboard, please contact Meg Norris (ACT Rochester) or Christina Stacy (Urban Institute).
The code used to create this dashboard was written by Manuel Alcalá Kovalski and can be found on GitHub.
Footnotes
Simply allocating funds toward topics that could increase equity and inclusion does not guarantee that they do so. Future research efforts should closely monitor outcomes and impacts from the recovery dollar investments to ensure that they close equity gaps exacerbated by the pandemic and address the root causes of inequities.↩︎
We use the term “Black” in this map to refer to the data collected by the American Community Survey under the category “Black or African American”. We recognize that this may not be the preferred identifier for all, and we remain committed to employing inclusive language whenever possible.↩︎
We use the term “Hispanic/Latino” in this map because this is the term used in the data collected by the American Community Survey. We recognize that this may not be the preferred identifier for all, and we remain committed to employing inclusive language whenever possible.↩︎